![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/common-goldeneye-1777.jpg\" "\\"common-goldeneye-1777")
<\/p>\nA new but sporadic feature on Feathered Photography.<\/p>\n
Feathered Photography sprang into life on August 18, 2010 and in the intervening 10+ years I’ve posted many thousands of images on this platform. Many of them have never been seen since the first day they were published and I think some of them deserve better than that.<\/p>\n
So beginning today it’s my intention to, perhaps once or twice per month, repost some of my favorite photos from the distant past. Not all of them will be my best images technically – some will only be sentimental favorites, some will be behavioral shots that I think are pretty special, some will be photos that readers have convinced me are better or more interesting than I originally thought they were and others will be photos that got an unexpected reaction or had an unexpected effect when I posted them. But admittedly the photos I include will likely be heavy on those I think are some of my ‘best’ images..<\/p>\n
Regular, long-time readers will have seen many of them before but for most of them it’s been a good long while. Each of the following four photos was posted during the month of October, 2010.<\/p>\n
So here we go, deja vu all over again.<\/p>\n
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When I photographed this Common Goldeneye eating a fish I was intrigued by the eel-like shape of the prey so I became fixated on determining what kind of fish it was. No one I asked seemed to know and in the meantime I photographed several other birds eating the same kind of fish at Farmington Bay WMA and Bear River MBR.<\/p>\n
Eventually I asked my good friend Justina Bernstein who at the time was Director of the original Farmington Nature Center and she sent some of my photos to a fisheries biologist at DWR who keyed the fish out as invasive Weather Loaches (dojo loaches). He said he was unaware of their presence at our refuges. Weather Loaches in Utah were likely released into our waters illegally by fish fanciers (aquarists). Since that time I’ve photographed birds, including Kingfishers, eating Weather Loaches at other Utah ponds and streams.<\/p>\n
This photo is smaller than I usually post because when I first began blogging I was posting my photos at 720 pixels on the long side instead of 900 pixels like I do now.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/western-grebe-7883.jpg\" "\\"western-grebe-7883")
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Ten years ago I knew that Western Grebes are voracious feather-eaters and I’d photographed adults eating feathers many times but until I took this photo I’d never photographed an adult feeding feathers to its chicks.<\/p>\n
This is one of my photos that inspired my intense interest in bird behaviors so it has special meaning for me.<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/black-billed-magpie-6445b-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"black-billed-magpie-6445b-ron-dudley\\"")
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One of my favorite photos of all time for a lot of reasons including technical merit, behavior, iridescent colors and flight posture. I caught this Black-billed Magpie with nesting material in its bill soon after it took off in the direction of the nest it was refurbishing.<\/p>\n
Some of us think of this photo as my ‘hat magpie’ but I guess that’s mostly an inside joke. This version of the image has my newer copyright watermark on it because I was unhappy with the way I’d processed it back in 2010 so I reprocessed it.<\/p>\n
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![\"Topsy](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/burrowing-owl-8956.jpg\" "\\"burrowing-owl-8956")
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A very young and very inquisitive Burrowing Owl parallaxing me as it was trying to figure out what was causing that clicking sound coming from inside my pickup.<\/p>\n
This may be my most popular photo of all time – if it isn’t it’s close. There’s no question that it’s my most stolen photo. When I do a reverse image search on it I get what are probably hundreds of hits from thieves who have lifted the image for use on their websites or for their profile pictures on social media and elsewhere. A backhanded compliment if there ever was one. Image thieves piss me off..<\/p>\n
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So there you have it, Volume 1 of my new feature on Feathered Photography. How often I add additional volumes and how long I’ll continue adding them depends on several variables.<\/p>\n
We’ll see how it goes.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A new but sporadic feature on Feathered Photography.<\/p>\n